How To Add A Link to StumbleUpon

Here's a something simple that you can do to build some SEO links. What I like about StumbleUpon is that you can pick any sort of web page to link to. You can pick a website home page, eBay store or just an auction listing, individual product pages, your Twitter account, or anything else online that you want to build links to. These aren't great quality links, but they can help give you a slight boost and help improve your domain authority. It gives you a similar SEO benefits of a tweet or a Google+ post, but without having to know how to write.

To start simply sign up for a website called StumbleUpon (stumbleupon.com).

After you have your account

1. Go to the top right corner and click on the photo.
2. On the bar that just dropped down, click on "add a page".
3. Enter in any sort of web page.
4. Click safe for work.
5. Pick some general categories.
6. Click on the blue save button in the bottom right.

The hardest part of this is number five. The categories are all predefined. You can't add a category of your own. This means that the categories you pick need to be extremely general. Spend a bit of time experimenting at first. You might be surprised what categories exist and which ones don't. Some examples is "children" doesn't exist as a category, but "babies" does.

To help you understand what I mean about the categories here's an example of a post I did for one of my clients who runs a baby clothing website. I'll be posting her very cute tuxedo romper. For categories baby clothing doesn't exist, so I went with "clothing" instead. I tried "tuxedo" and "formal wear" (people buy these so that their babies can go to weddings and look formal), but that category doesn't exist. In the end I went with the categories "clothing", "babies", "shopping", and "Canada".

Print-friendly Speaker/Session Schedule for Dx3 2016

Haven't decided what speakers to see at the 2016 Dx3 show? Take a look at my print-friendly Dx3 speaker schedule.

Also if anyone is interested in meeting with me at Dx3 please send me a text at 519-657-3995 and we can meet during one of the lunch breaks, session breaks, in the morning, or at the end of the day.

Look forward to seeing you at the conference.

How to Share a Facebook Group with Your Friends

To get a group off the ground, sharing it with your friends is a good way to start.

Start by going to the Facebook group then clicking the share button.

Next go to the bottom and click on the button marked Public.

Now go down to "More Options" and click on it.

Then go to Custom and click on it.

Next you will see a screen like this.

You can either share with all of your friends or select just some (you must hit the X by the Friends and then pick each friend). Another option is to select everyone then pick out a few people to not share it with.

On the next screen you can choose how you want to share the group.

I've chosen the private message option and as you see below you get a message window that you can write a customized message in.

If you found this useful please subscribe to my blog for more helpful Internet marketing tips in the future.

In Response To - About Face: How Facebook Drove Us Away

I recently read a post on LinkedIn titled “About Face: How Facebook Drove Us Away” by Dave Pilcher, the VP of Sales & Marketing at Freeport Press. The following is my response to his article.

Dave, in your article you mentioned that only big organizations are able to delete time sensitive Facebook posts, I found that I am able to delete time sensitive posts manually so I am a little confused as to why you think this would be something limited to big organizations. If you are having trouble remembering when to delete it I suggest using a smart phone or Google calendar to remind yourself when to delete the post. As for the rewards of connecting to an audience that you get for posting on Facebook, I would suggest reusing the same post on multiple social media sites. This would allow the same post to be used on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google plus, and Twitter.

As far as the $2,080 cost, let's compare that to a single newspaper ad or print ad. Given Dave's estimate of 1,200 person audience for $5 per boosted post with Facebook advertising, that works out to total views of 499,200 through Facebook seeing Freeport Press's ads. In comparison a single quarter page ad in the major daily newspaper in the city I live in would cost about the same. The newspaper's readership is roughly forty to fifty thousand. Comparing the audience that works out to a 10-to-1 reach advantage for Facebook over the print newspaper. As far as not everyone being able to see your ad in Facebook, in a newspaper not everyone is guaranteed to see that ad. Also one has to account for the bonus that these Facebook ads are being sent to people who are already familiar with the Freeport Press company. They had to be in order to agree to like the Facebook page. In comparison the untargeted newspaper ad is being viewed by anyone who bought a newspaper. The newspaper readers are much less likely aware or interested in any of the writers that Freeport Press is working with. Another advantage is that the Facebook ads can easily be increased or decreased. The quarter page newspaper ad comes in one giant lump of customers. Any small firm might be overwhelmed by the sudden influx of customers from such a newspaper ad. Facebook on the other hand would have spread that ad buy over the whole month, allowing for a much easier approach to handle continual customer attraction that wouldn't require extra staff and equipment to deal with the surge of customers on one day.

If it was up to me I would have just reduced the amount of posts you post on Facebook from fourteen down to two or three per week and reuse that material in other social media platforms. Also I think it was a waste to delete the Facebook account for Freeport Press after all the money it spent on getting it to that point. All you have to show for that money spent on Facebook is just a deleted page and a blog post on LinkedIn saying that you deleted your account. There likely was some paid labour or advertising costs spent on building the list. The value created by that ad spend is deleted, just like the Freeport Press Facebook page.

Looking for expert advice on how to improve your Facebook and social media strategy?
Contact me today to schedule an appointment.

Surprisingly Poor Website Interface from Industry Leader Intel

My computer's been running a little slow lately so I decided that perhaps it is time to consider upgrading my computer. I was looking at CPUs on Intel's website trying to compare models and was surprised that they no longer linked features with the related information. To give you an example, if you take a look at this comparing processors web page I loaded up, you will find that, in order to find out information about things like Intel® HD Graphics 4000, Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, Intel® vPro Technology, Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology... and other technological advancements, one has to go to Google and then perform a search to find out more about the technology. As a consumer I find this quite frustrating. For Intel I'm worried that by having the customer leave the website this opens the door for competitors like AMD to be able to target the same technology that Intel is trying to promote and state how theirs is better. One thing about the Internet is that it allows almost anyone to design a web page. In the case of this webpage it looks like Intel has decided to hand it over to the computer engineers who know exactly what Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT) means and didn't think that consumers would be unfamiliar with these high-tech CPU industry technologies. Even the order of the webpage leaves something to be desired. For example, buried at the bottom of the page were the most important features that offered real advantages to choose Intel over the competition. In the more expensive top of the page section they have decided to highlight things such as the bus type, FSB parity, size of the lithography, whether or not the CPU has a supplemental SKU. My suggestion for Intel is take my suggestions and apply them to this web page, get some user feedback and hire someone with a copy writing or marketing background to be able to make it so that the layperson can get a better grasp on what this technology means. Now if you excuse me I'm going to try to figure out if having a 26.7% lower max TDP on my CPU will make any difference to my computer speed.

Has the Website Killed the Sales Associate?

Listening to a couple of Webmaster Radio podcasts recently I heard two statistics about two big retail giants in the US. The first statistic which didn't surprise me much was from office supply giant Staples. The Staples spokesperson said that 42% of their customers are using smartphones to look at the company website while in the store. As one can assume that many business people have invested in iPhones, BlackBerry devices, or the latest Google Android smartphones it didn't surprise me that these customers are using their phones to figure out more product information for the products they have in front of them. This will likely lead to customers stop using the app. The second statistic came from Walmart which said 30 to 40 percent of their customers were using smartphones in their stores. This is surprising as it means that the smartphone revolution has reached the masses and now they are able to take advantage of this technology to make their shopping experience easier.

What does this mean to your business? With usage statistics as high as this the sales copy on your website is now more important than ever. I believe that making sure your products are described as best as they possibly can, through better sales copy and pictures, will have enormous repercussions. With talk of Google maps allowing stores to post internal mapping of a stores products, this may make finding products easier for consumers. The days of hunting around grocery stores, department stores and superstores trying to find a sales associate to help you find the item you're looking for may be nearing the end.

There are already in store retail mobile phone applications out there such as the Canadian Tire's barcode scanner app. This app connects the products bar codes to the item page on the Canadian Tire website. Companies are now working to leverage this technology. The usefulness of this technology however will depend on the quality of the content on the company's website.

Without quality content shoppers will try the new technology to find out that it may in fact provide no more information than what is on the actual package in front of them, then looking for a sales associate for help. I know this is my experience with the Canadian Tire application as their website in the past has provided me with almost no additional details on products.

Bill Turney, one of the Assistant Managers in the retail store I work in as the Webmaster, said “A lot of customers are so sure of the content of the website they walk in with the printout and simply pick the item off the shelf without having to ask the staff questions.” I remember when I started back in 2003 at Forest City Surplus having to answer tons of questions from customers. By spending the time improving the quality of the web pages I saw the tide turn from spending most of my time answering customer questions to setting up a website that automatically answered questions from those who were looking to buy online as well as in the store.

If these retail giants can get their act together and provide good quality content on their product pages, they will see enormous benefits. If they don’t, they will continue to lose ground to online retailers or give up a competitive advantage to their brick and mortar competition.

Has the website killed the sales associate? It all depends on the quality of your website content.

Website Security 101

I suggest that you don't publish a link at the bottom of your website to the secure part of your website.

I noticed recently that the London Employment Help Centre and the John Labatt Centre both failed this most basic security check.

Proven SEO Success

If I was hiring an SEO, the one thing I would look for is a track record. A proven list of results would let me know that the person I was hiring was able to achieve success on Google for the terms that he or she was targeting. I am proud to say that I have a long list of keywords which elevated the sites I work for to rank in the top ten on Google. If you click on the links provided, they should provide you with similar results as to what I have posted. These results may vary depending on the history of the websites you've clicked on and your geographic location. All this can affect what results Google displays for you. With the positive feedback I have received from perspective clients I have been regularly updating these results. The last update took place December 9th, 2016.

Forest City Surplus (look for fcsurplus.ca or fcsurplus.com in the results)

Third discount tools Canada
Seventh army surplus Canada
Sixth survival gear
Tenth BB guns Canada
Eighth pellet guns
Sixth marine speakers Canada
Forth camping equipment
Fifth camping gear
Forth army boots Canada
Ninth outdoor speakers Canada
Sixth freeze dried food
Sixth rain poncho Canada
Eighth extreme cold weather clothing
Third camouflage pants Canada

Real Estate terms for Link 2 Realty (look for Link2realty.ca in the results)
Fifth MLS London Ontario
Forth London MLS
Third MLS Property Search London Ontario

Norspec Filtration (look for Norspec.com in the results) - Updated October 26th, 2017
First Industrial Water Filters


Interested in getting similar SEO results for your company's website?
Contact me today at TimDHodges@yahoo.com or 519-657-3995.

New Year's Eve Events: London vs Toronto, Mississauga, and Waterloo

Since New Year’s Eve is on a Saturday I thought that, if I was going to travel to a public New Year's Eve event in another city, this would be the year.

I started with a look at London and was impressed to find that they had the band Glass Tiger as well as lots of events throughout the night. Because my new girlfriend is a big fan of Disney I thought the 7 pm Disney event would be up her alley. Even the 9 pm children's fireworks display gives one a double helping of fireworks.

Next was Waterloo. I was surprised to find out that their three New Year’s Events didn't go till midnight. One went till 10 pm and the other two events were over by 9 pm.

Further down the road is Mississauga. When I first checked their website in early December I read a message saying that they had spent millions updating their central city park and that they would hold a New Year’s Eve Event this year. The message made it sound like there was nothing left in the budget to afford a staff member the time to add any details on their New Year's Eve event. Last time I checked they had added some local bands to play at the event.

Toronto to my surprise is having country star George Canyon as their main entertainer. This is a surprising choice-having a country star in the most urban place in Canada. The City of Toronto website provides very little details on the event other then it runs from 10 pm till midnight and that City TV will be helping host the event this year. Considering the amount that Toronto spends on tourism one would have thought they could have afforded to put more details on their website for anyone from out of town looking to attend.

My decision is that I'm going to stay in London this New Year’s Eve and enjoy the festivities. Congratulations to the City of London staff for doing a great job preparing for this event and publishing the details.

Wasting Your Marketing Dollars

Marketing is essentially about telling the market about your product. This is done primarily through advertising. Now I have taken a few breaks over the last week and been able to watch some television shows. During the commercials I saw Lowe's TV advertisement for their exclusive offer with Kobalt, the Kobalt Double Drive. The Bob Villa like pitchman made this look like the most amazing screwdriver on the planet with its double drive technology that drive forward when your ratcheting backwards. I was sold on this being the Christmas gift of the century. Well, tonight after a long hard day at the surplus shop I drove across town to the Hyde Park plaza and went to Lowe's store. I was amazed at how empty the parking lot was for a 200,000 square foot store, but I guess that could have been blamed on the fact it was a Monday. When I get in the store the friendly return clerk rushes to greet me. I tell her what I'm looking for and she beckons the tool expert. The tool expert tells me that they are sold out of the Kobalt Double Drive. All that expensive TV advertising to try to sell something that only brings in $20 (in comparison to an expensive air compressor) and they weren't even able to get me to buy anything. I walked out empty handed. The marketing did its job; unfortunately they didn't have the stock to back up the promotion. Now I got home and thought perhaps it was just that one store and I should be able to go online and try to find this product on their website. Sadly no, I was unable to find the product on the website. All that money gone into expensive television ads and they don't even have the product on their website. Local London TV ads can cost as much as $1,000 a piece for a 30 second spot. Given the tremendous expense it amazes me that a business would not make sure it has enough product in stock before launching the ad campaign. Marketers remember the next time you get dazzled by the bright lights of TV or the sound of radio think about the total cost and whether or not you have the stock or the distribution system to match the demand. By doing that you can turn advertising costs into net profits.

Funclips Updated for 2012

If you live in the GTA than it's essential to that you get a copy of the 2012 Funclips coupon book. These books are filled with coupons for restaurants, entertainment places, automotive service centers and more. Each book contains different coupons. For example the Barrie coupon book features several golf coupons, while the Toronto coupon book has more restaurant coupons in it.

This year when updating the coupon book Franz the owner of Funclips had a unique idea to have a oval shaped deal image that would have the coupon detail information in the title tag. This means that all a potential customer would have to do is just hover over the deal image to see the coupon offer. I think it's a brilliant way to avoid making the customer have to scroll down to the bottom of the webpage to read the additional coupon information. It will be interesting to see how this affects sales.

New Website Launched

We just launched a website for my mom's mobile hair styling business. One thing I've learned from being the Forest City Surplus Webmaster is the more unique a product the better the results seem to be from having the product on the Internet. I'm hoping that my mother's unique service of providing mobile hair styling to seniors in the comfort of their own home will benefit out of town relatives who are trying to find a hair stylist for their relative in London. You can view the website at http://www.mobilehairstyling.ca

What I Learned from Running in the Election

As many of you know I decided back in the spring to step down from the CIPS London Section presidency to run for the MPP position in the 2011 Ontario general election.

I learned quite a bit from the experience and have to say that I feel improved by going through the exercise. I'm amazed at how my writing skills improved as I filled out the numerous surveys and prepared answers for potential debate questions. By the end of the election believe I was at the point where it was getting pretty difficult for me to get stumped on any question from reporter or constituent.

The entire experience gave me a chance to get to know London better. For instance I was surprised to find out going to White Hills that the LCBO and The Beer Store on some nights aren't open that late. On Mondays both are closed by 6 pm. On Tuesday and Wednesday the LCBO store is closed by 6 pm. as most retail operations are open on Sunday, I was surprised to find out that the White Hills LCBO was closed that day. In talking with White Hills residents it was easy to garner support towards Freedom Party's plan for allowing the Sherwood Forest Mall Metro (or any other grocery store in Ontario) to be granted the ability to sell beer, wine, and spirits. As this is my first time running in London-West I made a point of making sure I went to all the different neighborhoods on my door knocking adventures. I was surprised to find that the neighbourhoods of Oakridge, White Hills, Westmount, Byron, Old South, Southcrest, and River Bend each had a different feel to them. Doing the door knocking reminded me of my days as a door-to-door salesman back when I was in high school and how much I miss meeting with people at their homes.

The experience of going through the debates did wonders for sharpening my mental skills in getting me to be able to answer quickly on my feet. During this experience I had my first opportunity to be on television. It was an interesting experience being in the Rogers TV studio. I was surprised by the soundproof environment and the lack of feedback one experiences when being on TV. I see why many TV shows are still made with studio audiences as not getting the feedback to your words is an unusual experience. Even the small details amazed me. As the debate was filmed without any commercial breaks I found it interesting that the camera operator remained completely silent during the hour long production.

For the past few weeks I have been returning my focus back to my clients' Link 2 Realty and Funclips coupons. I will also be working on expanding my operations so that after mid-November I will be accepting new clients for my Internet marketing consultancy.

Sorry for the lack of updates but I've been busy

When I started this blog I didn't think that I would have so few updates, but I have been busy with CIPS activities, working on my clients' websites, (Funclips Coupon books and Link 2 Realty) as well as getting ready to run in the next provincial election for Freedom Party.

As well, my day job at Forest City Surplus we're in the middle of a major website upgrade as well. Our new shopping cart will offer some major upgrades over the previous one and I'm looking forward to seeing that going live. One of the main upgrades is it will start accepting payments through PayPal. It'll be interesting to see if we get the 20% boost the PayPal says happens when companies start accepting payments through PayPal.

Networking Outside Your Normal Circles

I always do what I can to network outside of the IT community. When I look at the clients I have, almost none of them have come from meetings with fellow IT community members. First there's Tom Dampsy, the London Ontario Real Estate Agent who I met at Toastmasters. Next is Don Hill the clothing wholesaler who I met through Forest City Surplus and who I designed a website for his wife's baby wear business. Then there is Franz Cauchi from Funclips Coupons who is a fellow Freedom Party member. I remember introducing myself to Franz at a Freedom Party post-election meeting in 2008. To my surprise right before were ready to start a Freedom Party executive meeting he said that he remembered that I was a website developer and asked if I was accepting any new clients. I gave him a business card and we were in touch later that week. After a few e-mails I convinced him of the value of my search engine optimization and website improvement services.

I'm quite impressed with the improvements I did for Franz and his Funclips Coupons website. If you're unfamiliar with Funclips let me give you a little bit of background on the organization. Funclips is an organization which sells coupon books in the greater Toronto area (Toronto, Mississauga, Barrie, and Oakville). In the past customers were simply given a list of businesses that had advertised in the coupon book. Now prospective customers can be more certain of their purchase because all the coupons that are in the book are listed at the bottom of each city webpage. The additional coupon details should have a positive effect on long tail searches for the businesses listed in the coupon book.

One thing that surprised me about Funclips from an SEO standpoint was that despite the fact the website had been in existence for over 10 years it had almost no backlinks. I would have thought a company that had a web presence for 10+ years would have more than a few backlinks. I guess this proves that if one does not go out and actively seek backlinks on an occasional basis one will not get any backlinks. It will be interesting to see what happens to Funclips coupon books and its Google rankings. When I started it wasn't showing up for almost any search term. It will be interesting to see what the results will be when I'm done.

Trying Out New SEO tools

I've been experimenting with Squidoo, Blinkweb, and Weebly to see how they work with SEO and linking.

I just created a bunch of new real estate advice pages for my friend and client Tom Dampsy who is a real estate agent. 15 Key Questions You Should Ask Before Buying Property, determining what you need in a home, advice on planning your move, understanding the costs of selling your home, 4 factors in selling your home, Why Own Your Own Home Instead of Renting and what REALTORS need from you.

It will be interesting for me to find out if any of these three websites will even be discovered by Google.

Is Your January Going To Be A Slow Month Or Your Best Month Ever?

I was determined last year to make January the best month for sales at the Forest City Surplus website. I just needed a reason to make customers buy from our site. I found tons of super warm clothing and created an extreme cold weather clothing section. Then I prepared a newsletter to our newsletter subscribers showcasing that collection of extreme cold weather clothing.

Thanks to being in the moment and pushing what's in season I helped turn what is usually the slowest month in retail became the best month of the year.

So I challenge you to think of good reasons how this slow month could be your busiest and best month.

It’s easy… mechanics could advertise remote starters, battery blankets or block heaters. Tax preparers can offer people earlier returns of their tax returns (and their refund cheques).

Take a look at your business. What reason can you give your customers to buy from you this January?

Welcome to my Blog

This is the first of what will be many posts to my blog. I will be discussing my business, Internet and marketing insights to help bring you more profits and customers. Subscribe now to receive updates and new blog entries. .